William Holmes Borders

The Reverand Williams Holmes Borders was a man with a calling. For 51 years, Rev. Borders pastored the historic Wheat Street Baptist Church in Atlanta… taking it from a dwindling congregation in debt and remaking it into a dynamic and growing ministery.

Borders’ stir in the community enticed a local radio station to offer him airtime in 1940. Each week, blacks and whites listened to Borders talk about segregation, disfranchisement, wartime patriotism, and black migration to the north. His program became the second-highest-rated broadcast in Atlanta…

And Borders became a vocal and visible leader. …playing a role in the hiring of Atlanta’s first black police officers. He helped desegregate Atlanta’s public transportation, in part through his own arrest for sitting at the front of a city bus.

Borders also organized a church employment service and formed the Wheat Street Credit Union to provide low interest loans to blacks.

Three times in the 60s and 70s, Borders ran for the state House of Representatives. Despite his electoral defeats, Borders remained politically active …. and Wheat Street Baptist Church still stands today as a testamant to his work.